Lillooet to Whistler - The Sea to Sky Highway

Yesterday we drove south -- on Highway 12 from Lillooet to Lytton, where Highway 12 meets B.C.'s main north-south highway, 97.  Today we drove west, continuing on Highway 99 to Whistler.  The highway, known as the Sea to Sky Highway, continues past Whistler to Vancouver, but we chose to do this as a day trip and the ski resort was of interest to us, so we picked Whistler as our turnaround point.

No sooner did we climb out of Lillooet than we arrived at the base of Seton Lake, a natural fjord which is drained by the Seton River, which joins the Fraser River in Lillooet.  To confuse visitors, the Seton River is called Cayoosh Creek all the way from Seton Lake to the Fraser River, even though, from a geological-naming point of view, Cayoosh Creek joins the Seton River just below the lake.  This is important because we're camped on Cayoosh Creek (or Seton River), and our drive toward Whistler continued past Seton Lake along Cayoosh Creek.

That's a lot of words, but the view from the east end of Seton Lake is what is important.  That's Whitecap Mountain in the far distance, tucked behind and between those two peaks:

While Seton Lake stretched east and a little north from Lillooet, Highway 99 turns southwestward and continues along the beautiful Cayoosh Creek, through some of the most spectacular mountains and valleys we have ever seen:

Eventually, we reached Duffy Lake, which is both drained and fed by Cayoosh Creek, below where Cayoosh Creek joins Highway 99 as it flows south out of the Cayoosh Range.  Here is a view west from a vantage point at the east end of Duffy Lake, with a pretty view of Joffre Peak in the distance: 

The view east from the logjam on Duffy Lake gives a bucolic feeling, with shoreline grasses tinged in light greens, yellows, oranges and autumn reds:

We drove further along the south shore of Duffy Lake to a pullout near the west end, where the waters of the lake were more still and reflected the surrounding mountains in symmetric patterns:

Here is another view of Joffre Peak and nearby Mount Matier from further west along Highway 99:

Normally, it is a 2 hour drive from Lillooet to Whistler, but ours took 3 hours due to our viewing and photography stops.  However, by a little after noon we arrived at Whistler and its well-known Inuksuk.  The mountain and some of the slopes are visible behind Blackcomb Village:

After a tasty lunch and libation at High Mountain Brewing Company, we started our walk over to the new Blackcomb Gondola, which we would ride to the top of Blackcomb Mountain.  But, first, we needed to stop by the Olympics monument in the public square, which commemorates Whistler's hosting of the 2010 Winter Olympics:

It wasn't long before we were lifting off in the Blackcomb Gondola above the village and Faux Frontenac (behind David's head):

The gondola climbs an incredible 4,000 feet at a steep pitch, and it wasn't long before we were high above the village:

We hopped off the gondola and started a hike on the Alpine Loop, which offers views in most directions from near the top of the mountain (well, near enough that you could see the peak from the trail in the photo below):

Toward the end of the trail, as we approached the Blackcomb end of the Peak-to-Peak Gondola, which connects Blackcomb to Whistler Mountain, we spotted this warming hut for the Jersey Cream run.  It looked like a lot of fun.  Hopping off the gondola, a skier would head left from this sign and drop steeply down into a bowl, where there would be perhaps a mile of wonderful, floating skiing before the skier would hit the lip of the face of the mountain.  After that, Katie bar the door!

At the bottom of the Alpine Loop Trail, we walked out to a viewpoint where, to our astonishment, we found a hoary marmot begging food from some tourists.  Aside from being offended that tourists would feed it (a fed marmot is a dead marmot), we felt sad for the little fellow, because he wasn't engaging in the very necessary work of providing for his winter survival.  Presumably, he's learned that he can get through the winter by mooching off of skiers as well.  However, it still is just not right.

Turning from Mr. Marmot, we looked out, down the mountain, toward the valley and little Green Lake, tucked between clouds below us, along the opposite shore of which we would soon be motoring to head back east on Highway 99 toward Lillooet:

For us, this day involved a lot more driving that we normally will like (other than when we move the motorhome from campground to campground).  Normally, when we are camped, we don't like to drive more than an hour from our base to explore, and we prefer getting more exercise than turning the steering wheel of the Jeep.  But this drive, along the Sea to Sky Highway, is one of the most spectacular and memorable we have ever taken, and it ranks right up there with the Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park, or the Icefields Parkway between Jasper and Banff, or perhaps the Apache Trail east of Phoenix.